"Powerful" sports bands win Australian "lemon" award

Pauline Askin

3 Min Read

SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) - Rubber wrist bands claiming to promote natural energy flow for greater strength and poise were among the products “named and shamed” by an Australian consumer group on Tuesday.

The “Power Balance” band was one of eight winners of this year’s “Shonky Awards” handed out by CHOICE, an Australian consumer watchdog that vowed to “put the squeeze on this year’s lemons.”

“Year after year, we are continually amazed by marketers’ efforts to take Australians for a ride,” said CHOICE spokesman Christopher Zinn.

“We don’t actually invite people getting awards because they tend to send us injunctions, but it does come as a surprise for them.”

“The band was tested at CHOICE under controlled lab conditions which showed it did little else than empty purchasers’ wallets,” organizers said in a statement.

Sydney personal trainer and triathlete Andrew Wood, who has worn one of the bands for months, said he wasn’t surprised.

“I don’t put in on thinking I‘m Samson and take it off and think all my power is gone... but you do start getting attached to it so I probably will keep wearing it,” Wood told Reuters.

“I‘m less taken by all the hype around its energy systems.”

Health and fitness goods featured prominently in the awards, which for the past five years have aimed to choose the “shonkiest, meanest and silliest” products and services.

Among them was a “recreational rope” by Medalist, which looked like a standard climbing rope with a label saying it conformed to Australian standards. But CHOICE tests showed “it’s hardly stronger than string and is basically stuffed with nothing tougher than tissue paper.”

They added that one such rope hung from a tree simply snapped one day, dropping a surprised child a couple of meters.

Other winners were expensive painkillers for specific pains that had identical ingredients to cheaper types, and a supermarket chain whose “under $10 meal promotion” for a coq au vin meal it said would serve four people actually cost nearly $40 because the essential ingredient, a bottle of wine, was not included.